


Deep in the Throes

by scribblemyname



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agent Carter Reference, Backstory, Brainwashing, Developing Friendship, Developing trust, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Multiple Personalities, Nanites, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD, Red Room, Treat, deprogramming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-14 19:51:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3423488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Coffee always makes me feel better." It was Nespresso, the good stuff that Maria didn't share with anybody, even Coulson, however often he begged.</em>
</p><p><em>Natasha looked between her and the coffee, then finally set her book on the blanket and took it.</em><br/> </p><p>Where Maria Hill deprograms an asset and gains a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lyubov' dlya detey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frith_in_thorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/gifts).



> So you wanted Natasha and Maria and said hurt/comfort. I'm not sure you meant this level of hurt, but I hope you like it.
> 
> There are loads of potential inaccuracies here on the medical/technological front, but I pulled a lot of possible stuff from the CA:TWS handling of Bucky, the comcs portrayal of Natasha's backstory, and a few hints of Agent Carter's Red Room material sneaking in. Hope it's entertaining if not perfect.

_I’ll stick to the plan_  
_Deep in the throes_  
_I won’t let it go_

Maria Hill never doubted Fury's vision or Coulson's intuition or Barton's incredible competence at risk-taking, but in an organization like SHIELD, there was always fallout when the men broke the boundaries of what they were and were not supposed to do. Maria didn't tell them to mind the rules and parameters because she was a stickler. She reminded them because it was always her job to mop cleanup on the mess they made when they didn't.

The Black Widow was intrigued by the possibility of freedom. Barton had severely underestimated the resources necessary to give it to her.

"I can hardly shoot the woman now," Fury pointed out in irritation behind closed doors. "Unless you want me to throw Barton in front of the firing squad with her."

"The thought tempts," Maria admitted, but shook her head.

Her hand didn't tremble on the file in her hand. She read the devastation on Romanova's brain scans with a steadiness that surprised herself. The Medical/SciTech staff had made various notes on the age of so much scar tissue, the controlling transmitters buried in Romanova's flesh, the evidence of so many triggers and programmed personalities and muscle memory. For the damage to be so thorough and thoroughly integrated, it had to have been done when Romanova was still a child.

"We're in over our heads," she warned Fury as she looked up into his pitying eye.

He sighed and stood from behind his desk. "Can it be done?"

Maria considered. A great deal would depend on Romanova herself, but among a tiny handful of absolutes they had uncovered about the Widow was the indisputable fact that she was a survivor.

Maria nodded curtly. "It can."

* * *

This one _mattered_ to Fury. For some reason, he'd read that file and softened far more than Maria had, but then, he wasn't the one who was going to be in the trenches with her, deprogramming the most extensive brainwashing regime SHIELD had ever seen.

"Your mind is a minefield," she told Romanova bluntly at their first sit-down.

The faintest flick of an eyebrow stood in as an infinitesimal shrug.

Romanova already knew that, Maria surmised. "What can you tell me about what was done to your brain?"

The first hesitation. Romanova paused for a tense moment, various microexpressions warring on her face before she asked neatly, almost tonelessly, "My brain?"

Maria swallowed down her reaction and stayed as matter-of-fact in her delivery as she'd begun. "Your medical scans show extensive application of physical brainwashing techniques in addition to whatever was done on a purely mental level. Your body is riddled with nanites we don't want to disable until we're certain there aren't lethal consequences to that." Maria put the folder on the table between them. "However, what we know is only what we can discover by looking. We weren't there. We don't know what you remember, what you were told, or how often you went in for various treatments or at what age."

Romanova smiled at that. It drew Maria back that those were the words that made the Russian assassin smile.

But all Romanova said was, "I don't remember either."

* * *

_There is a little girl with flame red hair in the middle of a plain, bare studio, white light streaming in through locked windows and dirty glass. She takes her place in line with the other girls, not too eager and not too slow. The music plays and they rise en pointe._

"I remember my parents," she told Maria Hill. "They told me I was going to be very great and that Mother Russia would honor my sacrifice."

Hill's brow furrowed as she skimmed over her sheaf of papers again. Natasha hid her desire to yank those papers out of her hand and read them hungrily for herself.

"It says here you were an infant." Maria looked up, surprise somewhat hidden but open on her face compared to a Black Widow.

Natasha shrugged. "I remember many things I could not have experienced."

_There is a young woman with red hair, distinctive as few of the girls are. She is anyone they tell or make her to be. She is a prima ballerina, a socialite, an heiress, an assassin. She can be anyone at all—except herself._

* * *

They went back to the drawing board to hammer out a new sequence of events that might lead to successful, safe deprogramming. Maria didn't even realize how much the team had expected Romanova to be able to fill in the gaps until she told them that wasn't going to be an option.

Maria went back to Romanova a few days later and explained their plan to deactivate a single nanite and determine the effects of doing so. "These things have to wear out or get damaged in normal injuries. We want to see the response on an individual scale."

She agreed to the procedure.

* * *

"Widow—"

"Don't call me that," Romanova snapped. "It's Natasha."

Maria paused and looked at Romanova. She stared back.

"Natasha. Are you ready to go in now?"

Natasha nodded curtly. "Amor enim filii," she said.

"Excuse me?"

Maria saw something flicker in Natasha's expression, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

"My passphrase," Natasha said abruptly. "Use it if you need it."

* * *

_There is a little girl with red hair who claims to love her parents. She clings to the picture in her hands._

_There are harsh lessons here. The other girls expect her to die, but today, the Madame Vdova chooses another lesson to teach._

_"Love is for children," she says with a faint, sweet smile, the smile common among the Widows though these young don't know that yet. "You are no longer a child."_

_The little girl takes the matchstick held out to her._

_"It burns or you do."_

_There was a little girl. Now there is not._

* * *

"What happened?" Natasha asked calmly.

Maria looked up from the report and answered, "It went well. There was no lasting damage, though it could have gone better."

The "Oh?" in Natasha's tilted head and curious eyes was obvious.

Maria shook her head. "The nanite sent up a signal and was replaced by the other nanites. Clearly, destroying them one by one won't work."

At least it didn't kill her, Maria did not add. Verbally.

* * *

Maria stopped by to watch Natasha in the private training gym she'd been directed to, but Natasha wasn't training in any traditional sense. She was pure grace, stretched out one arm up, the other down, leg extended before she moved into soft, fluttering steps and on again. It was no piece Maria had seen before but she had seen enough to know good ballet when she saw it.

Natasha's arms folded downward, crossing over her chest, as her gaze dropped to the floor. She stood still.

Maria let out a soft breath and moved away from the gym doors. They were looking directly into Natasha's brain and mind. She deserved what little privacy she could have.

* * *

Nobody told Maria what they had planned for the day, that they were going to virtually poke and prod at the nanites in Natasha's arms and legs and see what happened.

"Carefully."

Carefully or not, Natasha was up and off the medical table, snarling and snatching up a scalpel to stab into someone's arm before anyone could stop her.

Maria shot her with a stun dart and watched Natasha drop limply to the table.

She'd been sedated and restrained. It was only by dint of the buckle still binding one arm to the table that she hadn't been able to stab the doctor's heart instead of arm.

"Find out why she woke up from the sedative," Maria ordered bluntly. She kept her weapon trained on Natasha. That was her job in all this, to the be the agent in charge.

* * *

Natasha didn't look like she needed comfort. She was sitting cross-legged in loose sweats on the cot in her room. SHIELD had given her a simple but comfortable room, even if it was not lost on either of them that it had a lockdown SHIELD didn't hesitate to use.

"How are you feeling?" Maria asked, arms crossed as she stood in the doorway.

Natasha hadn't invited her in, just lowered her book to stare impassively at her guest.

"Like I don't remember what happened."

The words were smooth and inexpressive enough, but they bumped into Maria's memory of Natasha's small smile when she said she didn't remember being brainwashed and didn't remember the surgeries that created her into what she was now.

Natasha smiled again, flitting and brief, with a strange almost pleasure at the pain hiding behind her statement. "I suppose I hurt you."

"No." Maria watched for any flicker of expression, but saw none. "You stabbed your doctor in the arm."

Natasha gave a minute shrug and dropped her eyes back to her book. She turned the page.

"Don't you care?" Maria asked, feeling provoked enough to break her own rule against pushing too hard.

Natasha didn't look up. "I care."

She didn't look it, but no one could dictate to an assassin or spy what they should look like when they cared about something like this. Maria came inside without waiting for the invitation and watched Natasha's gaze track her as she approached to hand over what she'd brought with a small shrug.

"Coffee always makes me feel better." It was Nespresso, the good stuff that Maria didn't share with anybody, even Coulson, however often he begged.

Natasha looked between her and the coffee, then finally set her book on the blanket and took it. "Thank you."

Maria raised both eyebrows.

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to say?" Natasha gripped the paper sleeve and sipped once. She hummed. "Not poisoned."

"G—, Natasha." Maria shook her head, crossing her arms again. There was paranoia, then there was Natasha.

Natasha tilted her gaze upward. Her lips curved up in a smile.

* * *

"How many other triggers do you know?" Maria asked point blank a week later.

They'd been making progress, if too little to please her. Natasha had looked scathing when she realized Maria had been stopping her with physical means rather than the passphrase she'd shared, but Maria didn't like to use the levers installed in someone's else's mind by such sadistic masters. Natasha hadn't hurt anyone else yet.

"Dozens," Natasha replied easily. "I don't know the kill switch."

Maria bit off a curse and took a deep breath. She dropped her file on the table between them and shoved over a tablet of yellow paper.

Natasha looked at her oddly.

"Write them down and what they do."

That expressive eyebrow came up. "State secrets, Hill. I'm not trusting my life to a sheet of paper."

Ever since she'd sat with Natasha in her room while she drank a cup of coffee, the good kind, Natasha had been much more open with her words. Maria wasn't particularly surprised by these ones. A written record was a written record, susceptible to theft or worse, and Natasha had been a spy long enough to know that in intimate detail.

But Maria pushed. "We have to deprogram all of them that we can. You're the only one who ends up in charge of your mind."

"A nice thought." That same Widow smile Maria was starting to dislike crossed Natasha's face.

"SHIELD doesn't put compromised agents in the field," Maria stated flatly. It was the wrong thing to say, but the only thing she could think of that would establish how absolute she was going to be on this point.

Natasha tensed then sighed. "You can memorize them."

"If I say them—"

"You activate them," Natasha agreed, "but trusting you and trusting SHIELD are different things."

"You trust Barton," Maria countered. "He's SHIELD." And Fury and Coulson. She almost went on but stopped at the look on Natasha's face.

She rolled her eyes like a fresh recruit or a juvenile delinquent, rather than a world-class spy. "Barton would do anything for me."

"So that's why I almost shot him when he brought you in," Maria shot back.

Natasha's eyes dropped slightly below her lashes and an actual dimple appeared on one side of her mouth.

"G—, tell me you two aren't—"

Natasha shook her head before Maria could get the question all the way out. "We're not."

Maria sighed and rubbed her temple. A shooting pain had started up there somewhere in this conversation. "Coffee."

She made two cups and brought them back to where Natasha was browsing through the file. It hadn't exactly been Maria's intention to share, but she shrugged it off. The medical records detailed the tests done on Natasha's body. Natasha certainly had the right to know.

"Coffee," she said.

Natasha took the cup with another flash of that dimple. Was that what a real smile looked like on her? Small and understated, but genuine. It didn't hold the cruelty her Widow smile did. "You need to deprogram my triggers."

"I'm not going to say any of them," Maria warned. "Wouldn't you saying them to me cause a problem?" She shoved the tablet forward and took a swallow coffee. The caffeine and the scalding heat both served to take her mind a little off her problem with what they were discussing.

Natasha ignored the paper and answered, "I say them with the wrong accent. Like a key, it must fit specifications to be useful."

Maria looked surprised at that. "I don't speak Russian."

Natasha shrugged. "I don't know all my triggers."

Maria cursed and set down the coffee. Hers was half gone. Natasha's was barely touched.

"There's got to be a way to blank slate them all."

Natasha just looked at her. "Or you could kill me."

"Barton already decided not to," Maria pointed out. Fury had already vetoed overturning the decision for more reasons than one, some related to organizational reputation. Once SHIELD gave its word, it kept it.

Natasha just looked irritated. "I'm not talking about Barton."

"Natasha," Maria snapped. "I'm not killing you."

"I black out. I did things I don't even remember."

"You're not building a good case for me here. Those are all excellent reasons why you're not guilty; your handlers were."

Natasha made a small, inarticulate sound of frustration. "If I try to kill you, kill me." She looked…almost desperate.

Maria stared at her for a long moment. "No."

Natasha dropped her gaze and studied Maria from under her lashes as she sipped her coffee. Maria couldn't tell if that was annoyance, surprise, or pleasure in her eyes. Finally, Natasha sighed—noticeably, which made the entire gesture suspect in Maria's view.

"I don't suppose SHIELD is in the habit of killing its agents?"

Maria agreed with a nod. "Even our fledgling agents."

Natasha snorted at that. She set her cup down flat on the table and delivered with the tiniest, Black Widow smile, "I suggest you revise your habits."

"Let's stick with the plan," Maria switched topics without subtlety, but Natasha said nothing. "You tell me your triggers, and we'll work on getting them out of your head."

Natasha blinked, then nodded. She set down her cup and started to recite—in Latin.

Maria really needed to brush up on her linguistics.


	2. sushchestvuyet krasnyy v yeye knige

_All is blacked out but continues to grow_

They started the verbal sessions, and half the time Maria wasn't sure whether she was guarding Natasha or the doctors.

"What do you remember of Sao Paulo?"

"What do you remember of Munich?

"What do you remember of Tangier?"

"Antwerp?"

"Rome?"

The questions came broad and simple at first, but hard and pressing until Natasha answered something with meat on it beyond, _"Which time?"_

"I don't."

"Mission objective: encrypted hard drive. Successful."

"Mission objective: assassination. Successful."

"Nothing."

"The hotel was second rate."

That was the easy part, and Maria stood in the back of the room, gun holstered but ready, a reassuring presence for both parties if their agitation at her being tardy even once was any indication.

"This is all in my file," Natasha said with that faint smile and unreadable expression that told Maria she was somewhat irritated at the pointless lines of questioning.

But the doctor hesitated and said, "Yes, this is all in your file. We need a baseline for your responses and your memories."

Natasha subsided.

The questions became harder, became personal, became…

"What was your father's name? What did he look like?"

"When was the last birthday you remember? What happened?"

"Did you have a favorite toy as a child?"

Natasha's simple answers broke off at that one. The doctor paused in interest.

Natasha smiled her cruel Black Widow smile and answered. "A knife."

* * *

"So far, no minefields," Maria reported to Fury.

"That's good," he said as he passed her a set of files for a mission she needed to review.

"It's not good," she griped bluntly and flipped the first open to skim. "It means we're digging into memories that shouldn't exist and nothing's triggering any of her program—"

Maria fell silent and actually _read_ what she was staring at.

Fury steepled his hands together and leaned back in his chair, waiting.

Maria snapped the file shut. "I need a raise."

He ignored that. "I don't want her anywhere near this."

"Fine," she snapped back.

* * *

Natasha didn't cooperate in the next verbal. She went on the warpath, sparring verbally and planting seeds of doubt in everything they thought they knew and everything they thought she knew.

When it was over, she followed Maria willingly enough back to her office and dropped into the waiting chair.

Maria leaned back against her desk and took a calming breath. "What was that?"

Natasha coolly raised a brow. "I don't think we're making any progress. Do you?"

The question was…odd. Maria narrowed her eyes and studied Natasha's cool body language, her easy poise and control. There was something more offputting than usual about it, like she was a queen surveying her kingdom instead of the fierce, competent professional Maria had become comfortable with.

"How do you feel?" she asked abruptly.

"Like Natalia."

Maria's felt her throat tighten and the muscles in the back of her hand tense as if she could grab her gun. She noticed Natasha's smile was a bright, perfect thing that dimpled both sides of her face.

* * *

So much for no minefields yet.

* * *

Natasha—no, _Natalia_ looked affronted at how fast Maria bundled her down to the medical wing of SHIELD and shot her an annoyed look that two days ago Maria would have said was all Natasha when she ordered her to sit and let the doctor run her tests.

"I want to know which nanites are active and run a MRI if she'll let you."

The words gave the medical team pause. 'If she'll let you' implied that Maria was less in control than her commanding behavior would indicate.

"Oh, I'll behave," Natalia said with a little coy smile. That symmetrical smile.

Maria glared at the staff. "STAT."

* * *

"20% of her nanites are active and emitting signals in an irregular pattern."

"Do we know what triggered them?" Maria asked bluntly. She could see Natalia's eyes watching them in the background.

The tech shook her head. "But we do have something that might be able to calm them down."

"We don't," the senior tech overrode her. "It's not finished."

Maria looked back and forth between the techs and Natalia. This other Natasha had been cooperative, whatever was true or not. She may have been a liar but...

Maria went over. She didn't wince at the arm restraints, but then, neither had Natalia. "Do you know how to switch back to Natasha?"

"Why would I do that?" Natalia asked, head tilting, eyelashes fluttering up and down once.

"Have you ever done it before?"

No answer, but that didn't really surprise her. She locked stares with Natalia for a moment until she was certain they were truly at an impasse.

"Will it kill her?" Maria asked.

The techs exchanged glances.

"It shouldn't," the first one began, the young one who'd volunteered that they had it. Simmons, Maria thought her name was.

"It might," the senior tech cautioned, almost growling. "Her nanites may have more defensive properties than we've tested for."

"But we've run all the tests," Simmons protested. "We've deactivated a nanite, destroyed one, reprogrammed one. This _should_ work."

The senior tech raised his hand to answer in anger, but Maria stopped them both.

"Do it."

* * *

They had to move Natalia and restrain and sedate her again, not that her blood cleaners would let her stay under for long.

Natalia put up her first struggle when they latched her right arm to the table.

Maria leaned over and said it. "Amor enim filii."

Immediately, Natalia calmed and lay back obediently. They restrained her other arm and went for the legs. Natalia showed no reaction at all.

Maria wanted to be sick.

* * *

_They are strapping the young woman with the red hair to a medical table, and she is locked screaming behind her pliant body and closed mouth with her passphrase singing in her mind, closing doors and windows until she cannot even breathe._

_"She needs to learn how to become someone else," she heard the Madame say earlier. She hears the doctors say now, "Do you have the template ready?"_

_Then there is no young woman, Natalia, only a young socialite named Galina._

Natasha's body buckled upward on the medical bed, but the restraints on her arms and legs held. Her limbs were shaking, her head thrashing back and forth, as the injection began to take effect.

Maria watched the flurry of technicians around Natasha's body, but she did as she'd promised. She stayed calmly beside Natasha and murmured, "Amor enim filii," again.

It settled her down to stillness, but a whining muffled scream stayed in the back of her throat behind closed lips.

Maria wanted to kill every mother's son who had done this to Natasha. She wanted to take back her order to do it to Natasha again.

* * *

She carried her anger with her after the procedure into her office where the file was waiting for her. She dragged out her bookmarked files on her laptop and added Melinda May, Clint Barton, Bobbi Morse, Brock Rumlow, Sharon Carter—all her best and most ruthless, every asset she could count on to take the Red Room down.

She opened up the file again. This was Fury's mission. He'd gotten it approved by the Council almost as an afterthought, and Maria knew it had been in the works ever since she and Fury first saw the extensive scar tissue on Natasha's brain.

Maria fished out her favorite pen and inked hard on the mission parameters, "Lethal force permitted."

Only protocol and possible intel on how to better help Natasha kept her from writing, "preferred."

* * *

The nanites did have defensive systems they hadn't documented yet, but Maria clung to the prognosis she'd been given. If there was one thing they all knew about the Black Widow, it was that she had a remarkable tendency to survive.

_"There are signs in her body that she's recovered from this sort of thing before."_

Maria found Natasha in her room, tucked in a corner on the floor. She was shaking, curled around her drawn up knees.

 _"Her system is trying to shut down. Either her body will be able to fight it off or it won't."_ Maria heard the medical tech's words rattle through her mind again and caught in her breath at the sight. She held up her hand, a request for permission in the gesture, as she came closer.

Natasha looked at her and laid her head against the wall.

Maria settled gingerly down beside her and slowly reached out to tuck her arm around Natasha's shoulders.

Natasha was feverish and sweating, her hair and shirt sticking to her skin, but her eyes were alert as they tracked Maria's motion. After they'd stopped moving and a beat after that, Natasha let her eyes fall shut and her weight sink heavily into Maria. She murmured something in low Russian, but Maria didn't know what it meant.

* * *

Maria was looking for any further changes in Natasha's routine or deviations from what she'd come to expect as Natasha's baseline behavior. Which is why she brought up the next three missed appointments (more Barton's fault than Natasha's: she had it on good authority, Coulson's, that he'd talked her into playing hookie after the trauma she'd just gone through) and that she'd stopped visiting the training room to dance.

"Dance?" Natasha's eyebrow came up and she looked faintly amused. "What kind of dance?"

"The ballet." Maria shrugged and admitted she'd been watching with, "It's pretty."

Natasha looked startled. "This happens often?"

Maria hesitated. She hadn't expected this to be news, but with everything else chaotic in Natasha's head, maybe she shouldn't have been so surprised. "You're in there dancing almost every day."

Natasha turned her head to stare at Maria straight on.

"No one else is in there," Maria added after a long moment.

It seemed to break the tension slightly. Natasha sighed and pulled her feet up into the chair to curl beneath her. She cased the office with a few quick glances, more obviously than she had on entering. Maria doubted there was anything more for Natasha to learn.

Natasha looked up and smiled to one side, and the smile reached her eyes. "Barton has horrible taste in books."

Maria shook her head. So that's where Natasha was getting the neverending supply. "You knew that already."

Natasha shrugged. It was a subject change. They went with it.

* * *

Maria looked up ballet in Natasha's file. She frowned when she didn't initially find anything relevant. Then she flipped to an alias, Natalia Alianovna, prima ballerina for a theatre company known in the right circles as a front for the KGB and Red Room.

She dug through the medical files again and located Alianovna on the map of covers hardwired straight into Natasha's body. It was there, in the nanites in her feet and legs and in one of the MRI scans of her brain.

* * *

_The youngest girls never join the line in the middle of the bare studio floor. Natalia is no longer among the littlest girls. Her body is beginning to fill out. She is old enough to recognize the red stains across the grey concrete floor for what they are as she stretches out to grace._

_Natalia dances._

_Natasha does not._

* * *

At the end of their next verbal, Natasha looked worn out and there were dark circles under her eyes. It was perhaps more an interrogation than before. They'd press with the questions she'd tried to deflect, fairly certain that way lay the important things, but it meant pushing until Natasha started shaking and Maria shook her head at them to back off.

Maria stopped her for a moment and asked, "How are you?"

Natasha shrugged one shoulder. "Ask me in a half hour."

"I'll bring coffee."

Maria didn't miss the hint of a real smile.

* * *

Maria ran her own verbal. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about?" Natasha smiled her Widow smile as Maria thought of it, not without justification apparently. "I don't remember the things you tell me I've done."

Maria pressed her mouth together in a frown, then shook her head. She discarded any pretense at normalcy and said, "And what if you did remember? Could you live with it, knowing it wasn't your choice?"

"But it was my choice," Natasha reasoned easily. "My body, my mind, and my choice. I just make it without all the information."

* * *

All that information was stored in there somewhere. Behind all the triggers and boxes and software that had been built into Natasha's system, there was the fact that she had access to all of it, if they could just figure out how to give it to her.

* * *

The session was going well until the doctor said, "I just need you to focus—"

There wasn't time to recognize the threat before it was realized. Natasha launched herself from the chair, hands out towards the woman's neck.

Maria threw herself after Natasha and brought her down to the desk with a crack of bone hitting wood and the almost inhuman growl in Natasha's throat.

"Get out of my head!"

Maria jerked her head for the doctor to get out of Natasha's line of sight but saved her words for soothing Natasha. "She's not talking. You're safe here. Natasha, you're at SHIELD. _Natasha._ "

Natasha stopped trembling and jerked against Maria's straitjacket embrace, then calmed and nodded.

Maria waited another beat until she was sure Natasha would not attack if she released her—and that the door had clicked shut behind the doctor.

"What was that?" she asked when they were facing each other again.

Natasha's expression went blank, then troubled. "I don't know."

But she did remember, somewhere in all the personalities that filled her head.

"I'm sorry."

It startled Maria. "Why?"

"I'm compromised," Natasha stated matter-of-factly.

"That's what we're working on," Maria pointed out as matter-of-factly. "You and I are going to review this recording and figure out what just went wrong."

Natasha agreed. What other choice did she have? They reviewed it, and every time the recording said the word, "focus," Natasha flinched.

"We were trained in anti-hypnosis techniques," Natasha finally said. Her arms were so tense, holding onto her chair, Maria wondered if she would be sore in the morning.

"An ounce of prevention's worth a pound of cure," Maria recited the old bromide absently. "I suppose breaking a man's windpipe is more effective."

Natasha did not disagree.

* * *

Maria was passing by the gym when she saw the two agents who'd been sent to retrieve Natasha for her next session with the medical techs. Natasha was looking at them with an almost blank expression and an odd glint in her eye.

She was through the door, gun up and steady before the agents had quite reached the Black Widow's extensive combat range. "Stand down, agents! That's not Natasha."

The Black Widow or Natalia Romanova or whatever spectre they'd released from her hardwired catalogue of personas stood across the room, studying them as if puzzled as to why Maria had pulled her gun.

Maria wracked her memory now for the right keys to pick her way through the minefield.

"They're children, Widow," she settled on. "Not targets."

The Black Widow took a step back, frowning ever so slightly in her eyes. It was the tone, the vocabulary. Maria wasn't her usual handler, but...

She opened her mouth, then aborted. Instead, she cocked her head and studied Maria with particular interest.

"Whatever your head is telling you to do, you don't have to." Maria's hand was steady on the gun. "You can choose."

There was a knife in the Widow's hand. Maria didn't bother to wonder where she'd got it. This was _Natasha_ and Natasha was never unarmed.

 _"Natasha,"_ she said. Her friend. "Amor enim filii."

Natasha went very still, but Maria didn't hesitate, just pressed her advantage and bumped up the timetable on that exposure therapy they'd been talking about.

"You can choose. You don't have to do what anyone else says, Natasha."

She followed the rules they had gone over and gone over, mixing the trigger with conflicting commands and liberal use of Natasha's name.

"Natasha."

Something flickered in the Widow's eyes. Her brows drew together delicately in confusion. "Agent Hill?"

"Love is for children," Maria repeated in English, almost surprised to see Natasha's hand start to tremble. "You can choose what you're going to do."

_Amor enim filii. Obey. Obey. Obey._

_Love is for children. Choose. Choose. Choose._

_Vdova._

_Natasha._

Natasha winced, fingers flying to her temple as she crumpled in a small heap on the ground.

* * *

Maria was sitting vigil at Natasha's bedside in medical and just about to doze off when she heard Natasha's wry undertone.

"We've got to stop meeting like this."

Her eyes snapped open abruptly. Natasha wasn't smiling, but her eyes were warm.

"You're not wearing restraints," Maria pointed out. She held out a cup of ice chips.

Natasha took it but said quietly, "I'd rather have coffee."

Maria looked into Natasha's lucid expression and allowed herself the glimmerings of her own smile. "Get better soon then and you can have all the coffee you want."


	3. ona byla skomprometirovana

_It's not in my mind_  
_It's here at my side_  
_Go tell the world that I'm still alive_

* * *

The Red Room mission was Maria's. Fury had other things for Coulson to do and other things to do himself. Besides, it was Maria in the trenches with Natasha and Maria who knew whatever there was to know about the Red Room that Natasha had been able to tell.

She put together the plans while Natasha was still in recovery and ordered Barton to keep his mouth absolutely shut if he wanted to stay on the team or in SHIELD.

* * *

Natasha appeared in the doorway of Maria's office on the third day.

"You should be resting," Maria snapped out automatically, even knowing it was a lost cause. As the Black Widow, Natasha hadn't exactly been trained with a true concept of rest.

Her words did not disappoint. "We should work on the rest of my triggers."

"Like h— we should." Maria paused to lean back and cross her arms.

Natasha leaned her head against the doorframe and smiled, small but genuine. Maria wasn't sure she'd ever been so relieved to see a facial expression make a reappearance.

"When you're better."

"I'm better," Natasha countered. "You know I am."

Maria sighed. "Not today. Today, we visit your doctor for a physical, but let's skip the verbals, okay?"

Natasha wasn't easy to read on a good day. This wasn't a good day.

* * *

The medical team sided with Maria against doing any work on her verbal triggers or digging through her memories.

"Your brain needs to heal," the senior doctor stressed as she showed off a brain scan that looked less than ideal. "This right here is new scar tissue. While we will be able to minimize it, you need at least another week of rest."

Natasha looked mutinous. Maria thanked her perfunctorily and moved on.

* * *

_There is a young woman standing in the middle of a bare, plain studio. Pale light filters in through locked windows to fall on the cement floor._

_She remembers what it was to train her. She remembers the blood red stains when they were still wet from her own body. She remembers the match that burned her to the bones._

Natasha brought in the portable CD player Coulson had loaned her and waited for the soft strains of music to fill the space with memories before she took first position at the center of the mats.

There was no grace, no muscle memory deeper than thought guiding her in steps she'd rarely practiced.

She fought for each step, aching for the loss of perfection. Her legs screamed. Her feet bled. She pressed her back to the wall and her hand to her mouth.

* * *

She went and found the little tech with the big ideas and risky suggestions. "Simmons, right?" Natasha settled on an only slightly intimidating body language and facial expression.

Simmons popped her head up from the microscope she'd been cooing over. "Where's your attachment?" she asked slowly, noting Maria's absence with that faint hesitation that indicated nervousness.

Natasha shrugged. "Can you hack into the nanites?"

Simmons' eyebrows shot up.

"Therapy isn't working, and I'd like to look at surgical options." Natasha pressed. "Aren't they just software?"

"Well, yes. But really nasty, mutating software." Nevertheless Simmons looked thoughtful. "I think I might have something," she said slowly.

Natasha smiled. "Good."

* * *

"It's a virus," Simmons explained quickly. "My partner, Fitz—" She paused to smile. "He made the carrier nanites with the same signatures as the ones already in your body. When they're initiated, they use the same method of signaling that activating one of your programmed personas does, and they'll insert their code into the other nanites so all of them come under your control."

Maria didn't even ask how they were able to do that. Clearly, the girl and her partner were genius and genius enough to also explain the results in English. "Are they ready?"

Simmons turned excitedly to Natasha, who was listening with an impassive expression on her face. "Yes."

But Natasha had more questions. "How would they be under my control?"

"Oh." Simmons slowed down. "Well, the nanites currently activate certain areas of memory, thought patterns, and so forth. The new nanites will activate your baseline an estimated two point twelve seconds after the triggered personality stabilizes. This should reduce fugues and mean you'll have access to everything in each pattern."

Natasha glanced at Maria, who was digesting that.

"I can see a few potential problems," Maria said slowly.

"It's a stop-gap," Simmons offered. "It won't remove the triggers, but it will largely negate their effects."

Natasha conceded that with a small shrug of her head. "I'm willing."

* * *

Maria postponed the mission by an extra day and juggled things around on her schedule. She consulted with the appropriate therapists and medical staff and laid out the next branch of Natasha's.

"We'll be testing the three lightest triggers about a week after your operation," she said, circling the appropriate date. "You'll have three back to back sessions if each previous one goes well. I still could use a SHIELD registered telepath…" She let her voice trail and the option hang.

Natasha turned her head slightly as she looked at her, hand arrested on the coffee cup.

Maria sighed. "Or not."

Trust was still tenuous with so many members of the huge team involved in the excessive number of moving parts that went into Natasha's programming. They had dismantled perhaps a third of the mess and this operation promised to suppress another third, but there was still the rest of the work of cleaning out the simpler methods of mental conditioning that went into making her and several minefields that worked on verbal command.

"We don't know your kill switch," Maria reminded her. "It doesn't need two seconds to be effective."

What Natasha's more stable memories (or at least more demonstrably true) and the science team had been able to conclude was that her kill switch would leave her brain dead within less than two seconds. It was enough reason for Maria to shove aside the trust issues in favor of at least determining what could kill her. Fury would have ordered a telepath in while Natasha was still unconscious on the table and been done with it already, but the only person mucking around in Natasha's head that she did trust was Maria, and Maria wasn't about to lose that trust yet.

"When they inject the virus," Natasha said and took another slow sip of coffee, a glance making it clear she was changing the subject on purpose, "will you be there?"

Maria stiffened, taken aback. "Of course."

Natasha's expression flickered. The edge of her mouth quirked just slightly.

Maria resigned herself to dealing with this when she got back.

* * *

Natasha requested a mouthguard before she let them restrain her for the procedure.

Maria stood beside the bed, arms crossed and unmoving as she listened to the one endless scream in the back of Natasha's throat and stayed strong for her friend. She did not flinch.

* * *

Days later, Natasha was still sore from the operation when she slipped into some comfortable clothes and wandered three doors down to bother Barton. She wasn't on lockdown watch, so she was allowed to move freely, inciting little suspicion.

Barton wasn't in.

She checked in on Coulson, but he was wrapped up in a mission in South America.

"Be back in a week," Morales shot back with a tight smile.

Natasha thanked her and moved on to Maria—who was also not in. She checked methodically through her short list of friends and then moved on to breaking into the smallest, out of the way office she was most unlikely to be in and borrowed the computer there.

SHIELD knew many of Natasha's skills and abilities. It did not know she was well-trained in computer hacking.

Each of the missing agents were on a mission, higher level than the security levels reportedly went, but it was Maria she was most concerned about.

_"Will you be there?"_

_"Of course."_

It took a while to make it through the codes and fake her way into the system, but eventually Natasha reached the mission file. The target. The parameters.

The Red Room.

She caught her breath. They'd never make it in to take anything that mattered. They'd never make it out unscathed. They had no idea what they were doing.

* * *

"No flirting or you two are off the mission." Maria ended the amicable bickering between Barton and Morse succinctly.

"Aww, Hill. Killing the fun." Barton grinned at her.

Morse just nodded curtly. "So what's the plan, boss?"

May was currently in the cockpit and Rumlow had his guys in the back. The specialists were gathered around as they neared their destination. The plan was as simple as she could make it.

"Rumlow and his guys are going to make their distraction on the south side of the facility," Maria told them, indicating on the map. "Get a computer drive if you can. Morse and Carter, I need you to infiltrate here. Carter, you're the guns on this. I need Morse to figure out what we need from the labs. Barton, you're cover."

"And you're going to head it all up from here," Carter summarized.

Maria folded over the map. "Let's get moving."

* * *

Four hours to take a Quinjet to Volgograd where the Black Widows were born. Four hours and Natasha was sore and tired from the alterations made to the nanites in her flesh. Four hours before she could even reach them.

Maria was strong. Barton was strong. Maria could choose her assets well.

But none of them knew the Red Room or the failsafes and kill switches built into everything alive or dead that ever entered the Room. Natasha knew them all.

The computer served its purpose. She let herself into the armory and fished out her widow bites and mists and everything she would be expected to have. She built a plan quickly, layered it, discarded the pieces that would not work. No one would trust her unless...

She felt herself under the masks. The virus had run its course. She would be there under everything else. This was simply another layer, a deeper cover.

* * *

_There is a woman with red hair._

_She is not broken._

* * *

Every step Natasha took was another step closer to oblivion and a set of memories and understandings that were largely false, except where they were drenched in blood.

Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow, knew blood. Those memories rang with truth and were tainted with verifiable death in their wake.

She followed the guards who led her into the heart of the Red Room facility. She was bound, but doubtless whoever was in charge knew exactly how futile such restraints were. She _wanted_ to be led, and everyone here who knew what a Widow was knew it.

She blacked out. She woke, staring into the cold, harsh eyes of a grey-haired commander, demanding of her proof of her loyalty.

She felt herself as two people in one body, Natalia layered over Natasha, obedience layered over fire and defiance, but all of her was ruthless, cold calculation, and she smiled that faintly sweet, cruel smile she'd learned from the Madame when she was only a child still. "I brought back all the intel you could ever want on SHIELD."

SHIELD never knew she was a hacker.

Natasha was curled up at the very bottom of the Black Widow, in the core of her mind, under the sharp edges that followed orders to upload what she had brought and set up the feed she promised straight into the heart of SHIELD's systems.

She had done good work and loaded a broad swath of false data for it to pull from first before she'd ever gotten on the Quinjet Fury had missed four hours ago.

Natalia logged in and set up the feed under the watchful eyes and gun of the guard beside her. She was ready to send the Red Room data to SHIELD but hesitated. Her handlers wouldn't like her to do that, the Black Widow realized coolly, deep layers of training smothering out the shuddering, angry Natasha underneath.

 _You have choices now._ The reminder was in Maria's voice, stating the facts so confidently, so surely. _You can choose._

Natasha suppressed her internal flinch and sent it.

The entire side of the building exploded.

The guard beside her instinctively turned toward the blast while flinching away and toward Natasha. Natasha did not react instinctively but forced herself to strike his throat and jam her knife in him to drop him as soundlessly as possible. She could possibly be unnoticed as a threat. This was SHIELD and the last time she'd gone up against SHIELD, she'd come to understand that Barton's concept of minimizing property damage applied solely to civilian property.

She was not unnoticed.

An older agent—dressed sharply in his military uniform, under cover, gun out, and pointing to the entrance the explosion had just made into the building—shifted his aim to Natasha and barked out something in native Russian that was…

…her handler ordering her. The trigger made her hand unsteady and held her still as the Black Widow latched back onto her limbs, made her will sluggish and her thoughts sharp and clear. A tactical wonder, a lethal asset under impeccable control.

She didn't know all her triggers. She never had.

"Vdova!"

The Black Widow looked at him, ready to obey.

* * *

SHIELD went on full alert when the external feed locked on to an internal signal, but Natasha did good work and she had set up a series of flags that ensured it was soon recognized for what it was: the Red Room data coming in and false data going out.

Fury was dragged out of a meeting, saw what was happening, and picked up the phone.

* * *

"What do you mean she's in there?" Maria clamped down on the anger and worry bubbling up in her gut, and how did Natasha even find out they were going to be here? But there wasn't any time for that, and Maria had to think fast.

Morse and Carter were already inserted and heading for the labs. Rumlow's team was going in through the hole Barton's arrow had just blasted. May was their extraction.

"Rumlow, get me a visual or audio contact on the Widow," Maria ordered over the comm.

It was all in garbled Russian.

"It doesn't look good," was Rumlow's reply. "She's defected."

Maria didn't bother to correct him. She knew and understood and _used_ need to know, which is exactly where this fell.

"Proceed?" Rumlow asked quietly. "We have hostiles. They want to search the facility."

Rumlow's team was here to cover for Morse and Carter. Maria ran through the options mentally, discarded one idea, then another. "Proceed. I'm going after her," she stated, clipped, and geared up quickly.

"Are you sure, ma'am?" May asked from the cockpit.

Maria didn't bother to answer. She snapped on her parachute and gestured to her remaining agent. "Barton. I need a way in."

* * *

Maria slipped past the downed Russian agents with arrows in their eyes and throats, gaze skimming past. She saved her bullets carefully and worked her way in the circuitous route that would most likely escape detection. 

She almost made it when Natasha was suddenly directly in front of her with a gun pointed at Maria's head. She smiled sweetly. "Hello, Agent Hill."

Maria raised her hands slowly and stared down the barrel of Natasha's gun.

Russian agents filtered into the hallway around them and a general walked up behind Natasha's back.

"Excellent work, Widow," he said.

Natasha didn't react.

"Shoot her."

* * *

Agent Hill was saying something. _Maria_ was saying something.

Classical music warred with the screaming in her mind. It was the music of Natalia's guns and ballet and Natasha screaming behind the muffling passphrase in her mind.

"Amor enim filii."

_Love is for children, Natasha._

_Choose._

She lifted her elbow and rammed it in the throat of the man beside her, whipped the next in the head with the butt of her gun, and threw a knife into the general's gut before his next words could gurgle out of his mouth through the blood. Then she launched herself fully into the fray.

* * *

Maria snatched up her gun and began shooting.

Maria had thought she'd seen the Black Widow before. She hadn't. The Black Widow was a blur of violence, blood, and pain. She killed ruthlessly, efficiently, using every viable body part, her blades, her guns, her electrical Widow's bites.

Maria had to be more tactical, back against a wall, and aiming her limited number of bullets carefully.

Another old man appeared in the corner of her eye. "Vdova! _Ona byla skomprometirovana."_ The trigger was on his lips in perfect Russian.

Maria turned to shoot, but the Black Widow's head snapped up from the man she'd been electrocuting as a sharp cry caught in Natasha's throat, strangled before it could be fully born. She launched herself from a standstill through the air, legs wrapping around the man's neck, hands knocking the gun from his hands in a single motion as she plunged her knife into his side and twisted him to the ground.

Maria had no doubt he was dead.

She stared at the carnage. That shriek of pain. The kill switch. "Natalia."

The Black Widow looked at her, all deadly, unreadable Black Widow glare, without a hint of personality.

Maria's stomach twisted.

"It's Natasha," she snarled with so much force, it took Maria aback. She had never seen the Black Widow before in full possession of her faculties.

"Clear in the south side of the facility," Rumlow's voice snapped in Maria's comm.

"Clear below," Morse chimed behind him.

There was no one left here alive.

 _Natasha_ stood and stalked toward Maria, raising the hackles on Maria's neck. She forced herself to calmly lift her wrist and comm May.

"We're ready for extraction."

Natasha stood beside her, and they waited together for the Quinjet to come in close enough to drop a line.

* * *

Tech still couldn't get anything valuable from the computers they brought back, and most of the data was self-destructing on repeated attempts to hack. Natasha's feed proved the most valuable information SHIELD received from the mission. Additionally, Natasha took down enough hostile agents that Rumlow's team might not have made it had she not been there. As it was, there were casualties.

So when Maria brought Natasha into Fury's office, she knew the conversation wouldn't go very badly.

"Agent Hill." Fury greeted. He tracked Natasha's path with his good eye as she leaned against his wall. "Agent Romanoff, you directly violated your orders to remain on-site."

Natasha looked at him in that bland way that Maria had come to interpret as more pissed off. "If you wanted a robot, you could simply have left my triggers in place," she replied. Her mouth turned up in that faint, cruel smile of hers.

Not all of them had been removed yet, but it was only a matter of time and will now. The Russian's words, _She has been compromised,_ had proven to be Natasha's kill switch, but the underlying brain alterations that had kept Natasha from fighting or beating her programming were damaged beyond restoration. Natasha was going to be fine.

Fury sighed and looked at Maria. "I suppose I'll leave her to you then."

Maria just gave him her own version of the 'you've got to be kidding me' look. "She needs a handler, and Coulson has plenty of experience dealing with the best and the reckless."

Fury waved his neutrality and dismissed them.

* * *

Natasha found Maria afterward and handed her a cup of Nespresso, perfectly made. "You were in there with me."

Maria shoved aside the paperwork and took a deep swallow of coffee. It always made her feel better. "I was supposed to be there. Unlike yourself," she added wryly.

Natasha dropped her gaze in disagreement. She settled into the chair on the other side of Maria's desk, pulled her feet up beneath her, and sipped her own coffee. This was comfortable—unexpected when Maria had first been assigned to deprogram the most dangerous Russian assassin and spy on the modern intelligence scene, but somehow it had become normal.

Natasha leaned back comfortably. "I could see you. I could hear you telling me I didn't have to do what anyone else said."

When she was triggered, Maria realized. When she'd broken the hold the Russian general had held over her.

Natasha smiled. "I have choices now."

* * *

_There's a little girl named Natasha. She has red hair and a winsome smile. She wants to be a dancer someday._

Natasha stands in the middle of the empty room in seventh position. She rises en pointe.


End file.
